Category Archives: Lent

Conversations Before the Cross 4

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A Man Born Blind from Birth

A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ, Harrisburg, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor

Fourth Sunday in Lent/A • March 15, 2026

John Chapter 9

What are his references? That’s a question most of us ask in one way or another from time to time. Employers ask it: no one hires someone without at least trying to find out how they did previously. And the answer doesn’t always have to be positive! I was fired from my first job as a ministerial intern in seminary after a long period of conflict with the senior minister. A while later I began looking for a new job and found a church and minister that really excited me. I told them about my experience, trying to be objective, not trying to hide any of the details; I remember the minister interviewing me saying, “So, you resigned from your last job? I said: No, I was fired. The minister said he didn’t feel a need to check my references, but of course he did, so he did something ministers do under the circumstances: he called a friend in a church nearby. So not long afterward I was called into the senior minister’s office to hear him say, well I decided to do a little checking on you after we talked, so I called a friend who knows the situation in the church where you worked…and he said the guy you worked for is crazy and being fired there is an honor!

What are his references? It’s a question that creeps into our relationship with Jesus in one way or another. We see his story through the glasses of our common sense, our life experience and our own individual histories. We look for the points in these histories that can connect and explain his story. These are Jesus’ references. There’s nothing new about this process, the earliest Christians did the same thing. They were in many cases Jews who looked for a special person from God, just as God had sent Abraham, Moses, Elijah, David and Elijah. In many ways Jesus met these expectations, but in others he did not. The story about the man born blind from birth was remembered because it spoke to the questions of Christians trying to live their daily lives in harmony with God’s intention—trying to understand whether Jesus of Nazareth was a part of that intention.

This story matches the story of the church. It is our story. We also are people who encountered Jesus, were changed by him and now live in a world where his presence is not always apparent. We look forward to a final time when our Lord will appear beside us and we will be able to see him and touch him. Our problem is what to do in the meantime. This is finally an individual challenge: remember, neither the blind man’s friends nor his parents, neither the crowds nor the Pharisees, were any help to him in understanding how to live with his new sight. There is a mystery here, a mystery that lies at the heart of the way God loves us. For in the structure of our relationship with God there is a scandalous particularity, an individuality, that shakes the foundations of every life that takes it seriously. “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?”, the Psalmist asks, and the answer is always someone’s name, some particular name, some particular person. 

Why one person and not someone else? Why you and not me? Why me and not you? This scandal, this particularity, lies near the heart of all our questions about suffering and meaning. Who is this blind man that he should be healed—while others remain blind. Is his moral life more faithful? Does he pray more deeply or more eloquently? Is his faith stronger or in need of strengthening? Nothing in the text answers such questions, nothing in the action of the story gives any explanation. So it is with us, isn’t it? Since ancient times, one strand of thought in Israel held misfortune and disability and disease to be the direct consequence of sin, sometimes a consequence carried on through generations. There is a part of our religious impulse that always wants to quantify. So much sin, so much grace: measured out like the sugar and flour of a cake mix, balanced off like the weights on a jeweler’s scale. But Jesus directs attention away from the surface to the deeper realities of the situation. Sin is related to grace, of course, but not as the disciples think. The man’s life is not a result of his own action but is part of the structure of God’s revelation. The blind man is about to become the living gospel, the person who bridges the gulf between God and human being.

“Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord and who shall go for us”, the Psalmist asks, and the answer is always some particular person at some particular moment of time. So Jesus came to a small village for a moment and opened a blind man’s eyes. We tend to think of such characters as special, different, not like us, but the fact is that he is precisely like us. He is a young man who has overcome the obstacles of his life, found a trade and is working industriously at it. He is just like us: pregnant with the possibility of epiphany, capable of becoming the candle by which the divine flame of God is seen to burn and give light. The disciples want to give this man a practical explanation, almost a scientific one. “Who sinned?”, they ask, “This man or his family?” But to Jesus the man’s circumstances including his blindness are an occasion for showing God’s presence. “This happened so that the work of God”—some translations say glory of God—“might be displayed in his life.”

The Pharisees of the story are puzzled because Jesus doesn’t follow what they expect: His references are nonexistent and his behavior is scandalous. Since they don’t know who he is they concentrate on the how: their concentration on the question of how Jesus healed the man is so striking that he finally asks if they also want to become his disciples. They are seeking a clue to the who through the how: They want the regular procedures followed; they want the rules to apply to everyone. They want to know who Jesus was: where he came from, where he’s been, what schools h attended, how he learned to heal. There is comfort in the past: it is predictable, it is safe, it can’t get out of hand and surprise you. “We are disciples of Moses,” they tell the man.

But they’ve forgotten Moses was once a wild, free spirit on fire with God. They’ve forgotten the Moses who asked to see God, though that was against all rules. They remember only the rules Moses left. Moses said, “Keep the sabbath holy” and they have transformed that into something else entirely: don’t work on the sabbath. They can’t see that healing is holy; they only see Jesus breaking a rule. Finally, they conclude, he can’t be from God. They don’t know his references and so they simply say, “As for this man, we don’t know where he comes from”.

But the blind man is amazed at this: here are the religious and political authorities of his life puzzled. 

Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from yet he opened my eyes. If this man were not from God he could do nothing! 

This is the ultimate testimony of the believer, the follower of Jesus Christ: that our lives have been changed, healed. And that this is so, regardless of how the world may see or understand that change. Sometimes the change is remarkable and radical. Sometimes it is internal and quiet. Sometimes it leads to moments of soaring courage; more often to the simple endurance of living life hopefully each day. The blind man’s history hasn’t changed but now he lives with vision. He is healed. His future is new; as Paul said, “In Christ there is a new creation.” Christ calls us to a new creation, a creation beyond the rules we knew and lived by.

“Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?” This blind man—this particular life, at this particular moment—is the means by which God chooses to work and call others. Who would have thought God would choose such people: a nine or ten year old shepherd, a blind man sitting by the road side. You, me, the person sitting in the pew next to you: are these really the means by which the Almighty God chooses to work and become known? Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? It’s us: there isn’t anyone else. The people of these Bible stories are not the heroic figures we romantically assume. They are people who are busy about their lives and getting on with them. People who have their own hearts and hopes but who are changed when they become the particular way God’s work is demonstrated and moved forward.

The blind man’s story is our story as well, if we are the followers of this Jesus of Nazareth. The blind man is not any more prepared to become the visible agent of the invisible Spirit than you or I, and the whole event causes considerable disruption in his life. Friends desert him. His parents refuse to defend him. The religious and political authorities of the village and the area cross-examine him and threaten him and are finally puzzled by him. Through all this, the agent of his change—Jesus, the one who caused the change—is nowhere to be found. If this is, as I suggested, intended to be not only the story of the blind man but the story of the church and therefore our story as well, what does it suggest the task of faithful Christian people is?

The clue to the answer is near the end of the story. After all the shouting has died down the man meets Jesus again, though of course he doesn’t recognize him—remember, he’s never seen Jesus before. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Jesus asks, and when the man asks who this is, Jesus reveals his identify: the man replies, “Lord, I believe.” What is the most important task of believers? Perhaps it is simply to be believers—to live as believers—to keep living as believers. This is, a simple and yet enormously difficult formula. Our culture, like the culture of the first century Christians who remembered this story, is hostile to Christian faith and seeks to erase it by a concentration on the technological question, the question of how things are to occur, how life is to be lived. So our culture constantly offers us formulas: take control of your own life, read this book, listen to this speaker, see this therapist, try this diet. In this culture, our faith offers not a how but a who: Jesus of Nazareth, God’s anointed, the Christ who comes into the world. We offer an invitation: not to take control of your own life but to offer your life to God who is known in this man.

To respond in this way is anything but easy. It’s striking to realize how difficult the blind man’s life becomes after he is healed. His friends and family desert him, his trade is lost and the local authorities keep after him. Does he have moments when he wished he had his simple life back, wished the l light would go out again and he could sit by the side of the road begging? Perhaps, but what the story suggests is a man so transformed by this experience that he can hardly imagine his former life. At the end of the story, when he knows Jesus, the text simply says “he worshipped him”. Christian faith is finally this: the ability to worship Jesus, not because you have been given satisfactory references but because you have seen what he has done and know that if this man were not from God, he could do nothing. What are Jesus’ references? You are—I am—we all are together. “You are the Body of Christ and individually members of it”, Paul says. We are the ones he is healing; we are the ones he has taught to hope. Hope is ultimate healing. It comes not from a reference or a technique but from a decision about whom you will believe and what you will worship. 

Nowhere is that decision more clearly defined than at the end of this story. There finally we have the alternatives we also face. The blind man responds to Jesus simply when Jesus reveals his identity: “‘Lord I believe’..and he worshipped him”. The Pharisees are still fussing, still asking, “What are his references?”. By the end of the story, the blind man has a vision that lights his life; the Pharisees are blind. 

We walk in a forest throughout our lives. There are dark shadows that stretch out; there are places where the path is not clear. There are dangers and difficulties and moments when the way opens on inexpressible beauty. As we walk through this forest, we must ultimately decide whether we will trust the vision of Jesus Christ or stumble blindly, hoping on our own to avoid the pitfalls. Nothing guarantees our choice. Putting a cross on the sign does not mean we will not act like Pharisees inside. Only our decision to freely embrace Jesus as a guide can keep us on the path; only our commitment to come to him, as the blind man did, whatever our lives, whatever our history, and simply say, “Lord, I believe”.

Amen.

Conversations Before the Cross 3: Samaritan Woman

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A Sermon the Salem United Church of Christ of Harrisburg, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor

Third Sunday in Lent/A • March 8, 2026

John 4:5-42

I’m nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody too?

Those words were written in the nineteenth century by Emily Dickinson but I wonder if they might not stand for the thoughts of the Samaritan Woman as she trudged down the hot dirt path to Jacob’s Well and saw a strange man sitting there. One more man who would by his averted glance, his sitting aside, demonstrate his contempt for her and all she was. One more person who would demonstrate indeed that he believed she was nobody. She’s walking down the path at the middle of the day, the sixth hour. It’s an odd time to fetch water; water is usually fetched at the beginning and end of the day by young women who gather happily at the well. This woman has set herself aside and comes at the middle of the day for reasons about which we can only wonder. She is a minority in a culture of disdain. She is nameless even here in the Gospel. She is a woman in a patriarchal society, she is a casualty of relationships. All these things are like boundaries around her. 

The boundary of Samaria: as much a psychological boundary as a national one, one of those boundaries human beings create which seems to outsiders  artificial and yet to those who observe it is crucial to identity. How many years have we heard about the troubles in Ireland and yet which of us could distinguish between an Irish Catholic and an Irish Protestant? But the distinction is life and death there. Years ago the television program Star Trek had a show in which the crew of the Enterprise visited a world of enormous conflict between two races who were half starkly white and half deeply black. Captain Kirk, trying to make peace, arranges a meeting between the leaders of the two factions. He says, “I don’t understand, you’re both half white, half black.” But both combatants look at him in amazement. “But Captain!”, one replies,  “He’s white on the right and black on the left; I’m black on the right and white on the left!”. Jesus asks the woman for a drink and she’s amazed!  “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?”  There she is with all her boundaries and someone enters her space. What do you think she expected? What do you expect when you, as a woman, walk into a public place and there is a strange and threatening man? I asked this question in Bible Class and every woman there said the same thing: “I’d avoid him”. She expects to avoid him, she expects to endure his silent contempt, she expects to be nobody. But he asks for a drink. And before he’s done, she’s begging him for living water. There’s nothing more basic than a drink of water. Jesus asks for a drink and the woman asks for living water, the woman who was nobody, the woman who was nobody. The church is looking back and this is what they are remembering: once I was nobody. “I once was lost and now am found”, we sing. I once was nobody and I had living water poured on me and I became someone. One by one Jesus crosses the boundaries that have isolated this woman. He asks for water as if she were a friend; he offers living water as if she were family. He makes the well again a place to share for her, though she had been alone. Jew, Samaritan—we’re both thirsty, he seems to say. She wants to talk theology: a way to put the boundaries back. “What about where we worship”, she asks; “worship in spirit wherever”, he replies—that’s what God really wants.

Finally, something happens that saves this from being theoretical and that’s the moment when he asks about her husband; that’s the moment when it becomes concrete, there’s a moment when it becomes personal. There’s a story about a woman in an evangelical church who was very judgmental. One day she got the Deacons to invite a noted fire and brimstone preacher to visit. He said, “God is going to judge everyone! Everyone who has take the Lord’s name in vain, you’re going to have God’s judgment!” “Amen!”, the woman shouted. “Everyone who has looked with lust is going to have God’s judgment!” he shouted. “Amen! Preach it!”, she said, rocking in her pew with her enthusiasm. “Everyone who gambles and plays bingo is going to have God’s judgment!”, he yelled. And the woman stopped rocking and said to her neighbor, the one who had won $5 just last night with her at bingo, “Well, now he’s stopped preaching and gone to meddling.” It’s one thing to talk about theology; it’s another thing to talk about personal things, private things. “Call your husband”, Jesus says. That’s personal. “I don’t have a husband”, the woman replies. Whatever this woman’s history, and the church has imagined all kinds of histories for her, we know this: she has been dumped. We know it because the text says she has had five husbands and under the law of the time, she couldn’t divorce anyone, women couldn’t divorce their husbands, so five men husbands have left her. What does Jesus say to her? We don’t know; the text doesn’t t tell us but it is clear that whatever he says, she comes away from the encounter with a tremendous sense of acceptance, a deep feeling of having been heard and cared for, because her response is to ask, “Can this be the Christ?” He knows her: from his knowledge, she takes the courage to know him

It is the experience Paul talks about:

 You see at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrated God’s own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 

God didn’t wait for us to get right, God came when we were sinners, when we were a mess. God already knew us. That affirmation about God is at the core of what it means to be Christian. Christian life doesn’t start when we know God nor is it founded on what we say about God. Christian life begins when we know God already knows us and loves us.

The church has all too often forgotten that we come from God’s knowledge of us to our knowledge of God. We have fenced the communion table, we have created boundaries which kept people like this woman out. I want to say this one thing about the communion table: the invitation is for sinners. This table is a symbol that God is coming to us where we are, to give us the possibility of going to what God hopes for us. This table is a place to receive the food that can nurture us. And what is that food? Not just bread and grape juice. These are just symbols. They are symbols of God’s nurture, they are symbols of God’s call to move beyond the boundaries, beyond what we are, to what we can become. 

Just like Jesus with the Samaritan Woman, every day we encounter people who don’t expect much from us. They don’t know you are a Christian; they don’t know you at all. In every one of those encounters, there is the possibility of someone being nurtured. In every one of those encounters, there is the possibility to share the well, to share the living water. God has for each one of us, for me, for you, this plan: that you will be a blessing. And everything you need to be a blessing is right there if you will look around and see it. That looking around begins with the woman’s question. When she leaves Jesus, she says, “Can this be the Christ?” What do you think? Can it? Can you believe this is a Christ who can care for you despite all the boundaries?

What this finally means is: can you believe in hope? It’s frightening to believe in hope sometimes; it’s scary to believe in a hope beyond reason. The movie Shakespeare in Love is the story of the young Will Shakespeare writing a new play he calls Romeo and Ethel, which you may know more familiarly as Romeo and Juliet. The movie has a romantic subplot and several conspiracies which all gather momentum near the end, as the play is put on stage. There are all kinds of obstacles and as they occur people keep rushing up to the stage manager and wringing their hands. To each in turn he replies, “It will all work out”. “How”, they ask. “I don’t know” he says. It will all work out—How?—I don’t know: over and over again. That’s the hope Paul talks about; not a hope founded on reason, a hope founded on the faith that there is a God whose love is so powerful it can break the boundaries, there is a God whose love is so powerful it can call out of nothing creation, there is a God whose love is so powerful it called Jesus Christ from death back to live, there is a God whose love is so powerful it can call you to the same life. Share it, live it, offer it, as living water, as you share the well this week. 

Amen

Conversations Before the Cross #2

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A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor

Second Sunday in Lent/A • March 1, 2026

The black and white flickering picture on the screen highlights the dark points of farm implements, makes the wrinkles on faces stand out, tells us the movie is sometimes long ago. It’s the beginning of the Wizard of Oz, but it begins with the dust and dreary farm and the harsh black and white light. We’re in Kansas in the depression. Dark clouds forming a funnel, an image burned on everyone who’s ever lived in tornado country as disaster in motion, and suddenly the house is lifted, Dorothy with it, whirling through the air. When it lands and she opens the door suddenly the world is transformed: it’s now in color. Perhaps you know the story, how Dorothy sets off to find the wizard and a way home. Along the way she meets the Scarecrow, who wants a brain, the Tin Man, who desires a heart and the Cowardly Lion who begs for courage. Each is invited to come along and each has to ask the same question this conversation asks us: do you believe in the possibility of transformation? Can the world change color, can the leopard change his spots, can the whole world change—can you change?

That’s the question Nicodemus is left pondering. He comes to Jesus at night, when good Jewish men are locked up in their gated homes. He is a substantial man, well off, presumably married with kids at home. He’s respected, a leader in his community and his synagogue. Yet something brings him out, some need, some emptiness. Long after Nicodemus, St. Augustine would write, “Lord, you have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.” [Augustine, Confessions 1.1.1] Perhaps he has a restless heart. Perhaps he’s just curious.

He comes to Jesus with courtesy, calling him Rabbi, a term of respect, roughly comparable to “Reverend” or “Teacher”, and he says that he knows Jesus “came from God”. He’s been impressed by the signs Jesus has done. Presumably, he means the healing which was an important part of Jesus’ ministry. He doesn’t ask a question; he simply comes. What would you have asked? What do you want to know from Jesus? Perhaps Jesus is used to such seekers; perhaps he simply sees the restless heart before him. He says, simply, directly: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

What do you hear Jesus saying? We are so used to American cultural religion with its emphasis on what we do, on the gospel of achievement applied to salvation, that we may hear the familiar phrase, “You must be born again.” But that’s not what Jesus says. First, he doesn’t command anything. There’s no imperative here. It’s a simple, flat statement: “No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above.” I think Nicodemus must have heard the born again part, as we often do. Because he immediately focuses on the physical: no one can be born again he says. We apply the same thought, often, to ourselves. Nicodemus makes the obvious argument: grown up, grown old, we can’t go back ad start over. “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

Isn’t this really what most of us think? You are born, you grow up, you learn things, you experience things. You have some tough times; you have some good times. At times you prosper, at other times you don’t. Through it all you accumulate all those bits and pieces that make you, you. And among them are some scars, some injuries that left a mark. Maybe it was a marriage that didn’t work out; maybe it was a loss, maybe it was a friend who isn’t a friend any longer. Maybe you never quite lived out some dream you had earlier on. How do you go back and restart  after all that? I’ll tell you a secret only two people in the world know: I wasn’t that great a parent to my oldest child. I didn’t know how to be a parent, I certainly didn’t know how to parent a girl. I didn’t tell her how proud she made me nearly enough, and I wasn’t kind enough, and I didn’t know how when she raged to think, “Well, she’s 13, it’s just hormones,” and walk away, so I yelled back. I’d give a lot to  go back and change that. But I can’t.

Maybe you have something like that, something you wish had been different but never will be. So maybe you agree with Nicodemus: you can’t go back. If you do, then it’s so important that you listen closely to what Jesus says. Because you and I and Nicodemus have all misunderstood Jesus if we thought he was talking about going back. He says,

‘You must be born from above.’

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” [John 3:8]

Jesus isn’t talking about being born again at all. He’s talking about being born of the Spirit: being reborn. Jesus isn’t talking about undoing the past: he’s asking about the future. The wind blows where it will: it’s hard to predict, it’s hard to see. So is the future, and the question isn’t what about the past, but what are you going to do about the future? Can you live as someone born new today from God’s Spirit?

This starts with seeing. How many of God’s blessings do you see each day? How do you see other people. We are being asked today by a great political movement to see people of other faiths, Muslims particularly, as fearful. Do you see others, strangers, as children of God, the same God who loves you? Can you see this way? Can you start, not over, but fresh each day, freshly looking out for what God is doing. There was a moment when Western surgeons learned to treat cataracts which were often the cause of people being blind from birth. Annie Dillard talks about some of these people in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, concluding with this case.

…a twenty-two-year-old girl was dazzled by the world’s brightness and kept her eyes shut for two weeks. When at the end of that time she opened her eyes again, she did not recognize any objects, but ‘the more she now directed her gaze upon everything about her, the more it could be seen how an expression of gratification and astonishment overspread her features. She repeatedly exclaimed,
‘O God! How beautiful!’ [Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, p. 30f]

Jesus invites Nicodemus  to a new life, not to a do over of his old life; not to be born again but to be born from above, into a new spiritual life.

This, he says, is his purpose: 

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

And the first step is to believe and begin the journey. 

What happened to Nicodemus? We don’t know; the gospel never mentions him again. But sometimes it takes a while for the seeds of the spirit to sprout and blossom and bear fruit. There is a moment when the Tin Man, the Scare Crow and the Cowardly Lion think the gifts they seek, the new life they hoped to find, will never happen. What happens then? The wizard gives them each a gift to recognize the gifts they already have. The Scarecrow gets a degree, the Tin Man a heart and the Lion a medal for courage. What about you? What would it take to change your life? What would it take for you to believe that’s possible, that you can be born from above? 

Perhaps it is to simply to see God’s love, the way that girl saw the world. Maybe one of your wounds is that somewhere along the way, someone suggested God was sitting like a judge, writing up everything you’d ever done wrong. Maybe your list is long. Then listen: God is here, not to judge, but to love; God is here, not to judge, but to save. God is here, inviting you to start fresh today. God is here: how beautiful.

Amen.

Conversations Before the Cross 1:

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Satan Speaks

A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ
of Harrisburg, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2026

First Sunday in Lent/A • February 22, 2006

Matthew 4:1-11

What was the best day of your life? Go there for a moment: remember it. Was there a party? Were you with a few people, family, a crowd, or were you alone? Was there cake? There’s often cake on the best day of your life. What did it smell like? How did it taste? Did you know then it would be the best day of your life? I mention all this because Jesus’ baptism must have been about the best day of his life, even though there is no report about cake. I don’t think chocolate cake had been invented yet, so perhaps it doesn’t matter. But there was a crowd, his friend John, and wow: a voice from heaven! Even when Jacquelyn and I were married, there was no voice from heaven, though she looked like an angel. “You are my beloved child, I’m pleased with you.” Some of us live our whole lives waiting to hear that; it must have been amazing. 

All of this is a prelude, it turns out, because no one gets to live in the best day of their life forever ,and for Jesus, the next day is terrible. It’s like living here, having it hit 50 degrees one day and then a couple of days later barely making 16. Ouch: things sure can turn around. In the life of Jesus, the turnaround is to go from heaven opening to being driven into the wilderness and going hungry for 40 days. No cake; no food at all. Just the dangerous, daunting, desert wilderness where all you can hear is your empty stomach begging to be filled. This is the site of temptation: this is where temptation always occurs, when we are empty. How can I get what I need? Isn’t that the question that leads to temptation? 

“Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” Matthew, Mark, and Luke all include this story, apparently using two different versions which they combine. Since no one else is present, we can only conclude they are relying on Jesus’ own account of his time in the wilderness. Geography is theology in the gospel. To go from the Jordan River into the wilderness is to go backward on the journey of God’s people. There, just as they had been, Jesus is hungry, thirsty, and there he faces temptation. He faces it alone: the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove has flown off; the voice from heaven is silent. Jesus, as the song says, has to walk this lonesome valley by himself.

Alone, hungry, vulnerable, Jesus fasts for forty days and nights. Here is the first thing to learn about temptation: it often comes when we are most vulnerable. Today we rarely practice the spiritual discipline of fasting in Protestant churches, but our fathers and mothers in the faith did. We took over Thanksgiving from the Pilgrims; seldom mentioned and almost never included in Thanksgiving is the fast that preceded it. Today, the Lenten discipline of giving something up has fallen into disfavor, but giving something up, taking something off the table of possibility, induces temptation. It walks us into the valley where Jesus walked.

Imagine him there in the desert. He’s lost but beyond worrying about direction. There is a moment when you become so focused on your hunger that nothing else matters. This is the moment he hears the voice of temptation; this is the moment, alone, hungry, vulnerable, he is like us, on his own, facing temptation alone. Three temptations are mentioned, but in a sense, they are the same temptation. All of them circle back to this simple principle: who’s in charge here?

“If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread.” This is the first test.

A few days before, he is acclaimed as Son of God, but what does that mean? The first temptation is to use who he is to sustain himself on his own, to feed himself. God fed the people of Israel with manna, bread, in the wilderness; why shouldn’t the Son of God feed himself by making bread appear? It is a test: if you are the Son of God—the question suggests that perhaps he is not the Son of God after all. Does he believe in what’s been said? Does he believe in his own call? And can that call, that power, be used for himself, to meet his own needs? The second temptation, to recklessly throw himself out into the air, depending on the angels to save him, is like it. Both ask: do you believe who you are? Show it by using the gifts of God not for God’s purpose but for your own.

The Wizard of Earthsea is a long story about a young wizard who becomes so proud of his gifts that he uses them to show off. But in showing off, a dark side of him splits off, and the rest of the tale is a story of how that darkness darkens the world until finally, as a wizard named Sparrowhawk, he must confront the darkness. Along the way, he learns this most important lesson: that all gifts are given with a purpose, and the purpose is to serve others and serve the larger unfolding, blossoming purpose of the creator. The challenge of the temptation to Jesus asks whether he will serve his own needs or stand in humility and serve the unfolding purpose of God. Why am I hungry, he must have wondered: the answer is so that in hunger, he can learn humility.

The final temptation in the wilderness sums all temptation up because it asks who Jesus is serving. All the kingdoms of the world are offered, a way of summing up worldly success; only serve me, the tempter says.

How does Jesus face these temptations? He faces them by living from God’s Word. Today we live in such a self-regarding culture that worship is often judged by the standards of entertainment. “I really enjoyed that,” someone will say, and there are endless advertisements for preachers to help us make worship more fun, more interesting, more lighthearted. But worship is really a way to come back to the Word of God. This is what finally answers temptation and it is the only thing that answers it. Three times Jesus is tempted; three times he quotes back God’s Word to the tempter.

We all walk through times of temptation. We all walk through wildernesses. We all face questions. Tracy Cochran writes, 

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. “[Quoted by Tracy Cochran, In the midst of Winter, an Invincible Spring, Parabola, Spring, p. 26]

If we want to find the adventure, we have to walk through the temptation and answer the question of who we are serving. 

This year, this season, this Lent, I hope to walk with you, listen to God’s Word, listen to the characters in the story, listen to their questions. Here is the first and most important and the tempter is asking it every single day: who are you serving? Rainer Rilke, a German poet, said in a letter to a young friend, 

I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” [Rainier Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 1903.]

This season, we are challenged to live the questions God’s Word asks, to confront them, to wonder with them, to let them live in us and change us.

Amen.

The Lord Has Need of It

by

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ, York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor © 2025

Palm Sunday/C • April 13, 2025

Luke 19:28-40

Notice the breath. Buddhist teaching begins with this simple suggestion: notice the breath. A yoga instructor says it over and over: notice the breath. It’s repeated because one of the hardest things is to see what’s really there. We get used to a room, and don’t see it’s color; we get used to a person and forget why they interested us. We hear a story and when it’s repeated, assume we know the details already and fill them in. Maybe you grew up like I did, in a church where Palm Sunday was one of the most fun times in the year. It didn’t have presents like Christmas but it did have palms and it was one Sunday when children were not only invited into the sanctuary but allowed to be a little rowdy. Who would have thought our Sunday School class would have to be told to be louder when we shouted Hosanna? 

So we come to Palm Sunday, perhaps with that vision in mind;. We’ve heard this story. We know how it goes: Jesus, palms, crowds, yay yay, hosanna, done;  moving on. But to truly hear Luke’s version of this story, the one we read today, begin by noticing what isn’t there: no palms, no children, no hosanna. Perhaps if we notice what isn’t there and clear it away, we will be ready to see what is there. Notice the breath. That’s our job today: see what Luke shows us, understand what God means, consider what to do about it.

Jesus has been on the way to Jerusalem for a long time. Along the way, he told his friends that it would mean a cross, death, suffering, but that they should believe as he did in God’s power to give life, in God’s love beyond life and death. Everything in the gospels says they didn’t believe him. When he first tells them, Peter himself didn’t believe it and argued with Jesus. James and John are arguing about the power structure of the new administration of King Jesus right up to the very end, to the point where he has to tell them to stop. 

Now they approach Jerusalem itself,. Herod—remember Herod? He was the king when Jesus was born, he was the king who killed John the Baptist, he’s the king that threatened Jesus. Herod had rebuilt the Temple and parts of the city. The temple had so much white marble and gold trim it was said a person could hardly look at it in the harsh mid-day sun. It lasted less than 50 years. 

Jerusalem is on top of a small mountain, Mount Zion The road up to it is windy and switches back and forth. At Passover, people came from all over to the city, so it would have been crowded; imagine driving to Harrisburg for the Thanksgiving parade  Jesus and his disciples and followers are peasants and so are most of the people around them. They don’t have special clothes for this special time; peasants wore a sort of undergarment and a cloak. The cloak was valuable enough to pawn for a day’s food, important enough that there was a law that the pawnbroker couldn’t keep the cloak overnight. They’re often pictured marching like a military unit, lined up behind Jesus with crowds on either side but that’s a mistake. Jesus and his friends are part of a larger procession of pilgrims to the city. Surely they would have spread out as much as possible; think of a crowd moving along Among them may have been a Roman military unit, sent to reinforce the garrison at a time when trouble was expected. That would have meant soldiers in metal breastplates with swords and a commander mounted on a horse leading them. 

Now they come to the Mount of Olives. It’s where Jesus will go after the last supper, where he will pray, where he will be arrested. There are really two processions going on here. One is Jesus, who is walking toward the cross, marching toward heavenly glory; the other is everyone else, walking toward victory, marching toward worldly success. 

As they move along, Jesus sends some disciples off to acquire a colt. And he gives them a coded phrase: “The Lord has need of it.” Now the word ‘Lord’ has a double meaning. It could mean the owner of the donkey but it’s also the word most often used to describe Jesus. The way he instructs them is strange: “If someone asks why you are untying it…” It’s as if you saw a stranger in front of your house getting into a neighbor’s car.. “Just say, ‘the Lord has need of it’” In the event, when they untie the colt, it’s the owner himself who confronts them. Sometimes when this is preached, explanations are created about how Jesus had prearranged for the colt. We don’t really know, but if he had done so, why are the owners asking what they’re doing? “The Lord has need of it,” they say. This time ‘Lord’ clearly means Jesus. The owner must have faced a difficult choice. A colt is valuable, like a car. We’re all used to the church asking for funds but then we decide what to give. Here, he’s confronted with a choice; what would you do? “The Lord has need of it.” 

What we call the Palm Procession really begins with this colt. When they bring it back, they throw their cloaks, their valuable cloaks, on it to make a saddle and it says “…they put Jesus on it.” Notice the breath: notice the detail. He doesn’t climb on, he doesn’t mount up. Like the Spirit whooshing him off to the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry, his friends put him up on that colt and suddenly people must have looked and suddenly he’s become a symbol and suddenly he’s mocking all the panoply and pageantry of the marching Romans and soldiers, coming to Jerusalem, as they are, coming mounted, as they are, but on a colt. People must have noticed and remembered that the prophet Zechariah had said,

9Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. [Zechariah 9:9]

There are two processions here. One is Jesus, who is walking toward the cross, marching toward heavenly glory; the other is everyone else, walking toward victory, marching toward worldly success. One is led by people proud of their power; one by a man rocking humbly on a colt. One is led by people determined to deal death to make power; one is led by someone who believes life can overcome death. 

The crowd notices; people are inspired. Inspired—meaning filled with Spirit: notice the breath, the Spirit. They take off their cloaks and throw them down. We call it Palm Sunday but there are no cheap palms, no branches cut from trees someone else owns here. The cloaks they are throwing down are for some their most valuable possession. Like the owners of the colt, they have heard, “The Lord has need of it”, and give more than what they have—they give what they are. It’s dangerous to celebrate this prophet. This is exactly the kind of demonstration those soldiers are meant to stop. Just as some Pharisees had warned Jesus that Herod was trying to kill him, now they warn him to make his followers be quiet, to stop this dangerous demonstration. Jesus simply says it can’t be stopped: if they stop, creation itself will take up the cry. 

What is it they are shouting? We all grew up shouting hosanna, which means “Save us”. I’ve led countless services over the years where we had people shout, where we waved palms, I’ve done it here. But notice the details in this account, because each account has something to say. And in this one, it’s not Hosanna they shout, it’s “Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” Now we’ve heard that, or something very much like that before, haven’t we? It’s like the lines to an old song, the kind that can drive you crazy trying to remember. Where did we hear it? What’s the title? Who’s the singer? We heard it on Christmas Eve. Its title is the Advent, the birth, of Christ. It’s the song of the angels. We have circled back to Christmas; we have circled back to Jesus.

This is Palm Sunday and it’s about a procession but there are really two processions. One is Jesus, who is on his way to the cross, marching toward heavily glory; the other is everyone else, walking toward victory, marching toward worldly success. Jesus doesn’t live alone. He consciously builds a community. In Luke we hear not only about the 12 disciples but about 70 people he sends out. In this story, it’s the people around him who move the story forward: the owner of the colt, who gives it when the Lord has need of it, the friends who make a saddle of their cloaks, because the Lord has need of them, the people who don’t even know Jesus yet lay down their cloaks because somehow they too sense the Lord has need of them. 

What are we to do about all this? Every one of us eventually faces a moment when we sense the Lord has need of something. We’ve been talking throughout Lent about moving from fear to faith. Perhaps the greatest need of all is for us simply to believe Jesus, listen to him, and build our life together around what he says instead of what we think. Who we are is God’s children; who we are is people meant to sing songs of praise like the ones around Jesus. What the Lord needs isn’t just what we have: it’s who we are. If we don’t sing the song of salvation, it’s left to the stones. God will make a way, God is making a way, and we are meant to be that way.

Notice the breath. Breath is a basic Bible play on words. Breath: in Greek, pneuma, in Hebrew, reach: both are the words we translate ‘spirit’. Notice the breath: notice the Spirit. This is Palm Sunday and it’s about a procession but there are really two processions. One is Jesus, who is walking toward the cross, marching toward heavenly glory; the other is everyone else, walking toward victory, marching toward worldly success. Which one are you marching in? The answer is the one you give when the moment comes and the Spirit says: “The Lord has need of it.”

Amen.

Are You Going to the Party?

by

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Fourth Sunday in Lent/C • March 30, 2025

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

“A man had two sons…” I know you are all Biblically literate so I know that just this simple phrase has already set your teeth on edge. I’m sure you are already bracing for the rest of the story. Because we know what happens in the Bible with stories that begin this way. Adam had two sons: Abel and Cain, and Cain killed his brother. Abraham had two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, and the rivalry between them is used to explain the millennia long conflict that in our time is represented by Israelis and Palestinians. Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob and Jacob stole his brother’s birthright. King David had two sons who were rivals, Amnon and Absalom, and the result was a civil war that almost destroyed the kingdom. 

“A man had two sons.” Think how Jesus’ listeners, who knew all these stories, for whom these were family stories, must have heard these words. Think how they must have cringed. “A man had two sons.” I know you’ve heard this story before; today I want to ask you to set aside everything you know about it, everything you’ve heard, and try, like someone who has just cleaned their glasses, to see it in a new light.

“A man had two sons.” The older one is a lot like his father, must have learned from his father, as farm kids do, all the skills and patience of sowing, caring, reaping, up at dawn to feed the animals, working by lamp light when the harvest has to be gotten in. He’s grown into a sold man by the time of this story, I’m sure his father is proud, I’m sure he’s beginning to take his place in the community. He never disobeyed his father, he never asked for anything, he just worked like a slave on the farm day in and day out.

“A man had two sons.” The younger one; what shall we say about him? He isn’t any of those things I just mentioned. I think of him never quite getting farm work, never wanting to do it, avoiding it whenever he can, growing up with the farm asi a burden threatened to press the life out of him. I think of him always wanting to go to the city, eagerly listening to stories from travelers, imagining a day when he himself would see the sights.

You know what happened. As soon as he was old enough, he went to his father and asked for his share of the inheritance. You may have heard that this was treating his father like he was dead but the father doesn’t object; he sells some property and gives his son the money and the younger son takes off for the city, where he squanders all of it in dissolute living. I’m going to pause just a moment for you to imagine that. Ok, that’s enough, a little dissolute living goes a long way. Once the money’s gone, of course, he has to find work and he works for a Gentile on a pig farm. Have you ever been to a pig farm? Have you ever driven by a pig farm? A pig farm can make your eyes water. Of course, pigs are forbidden to Jews, but there’s no suggestion he’s eating pork, just helping raise it, and he’s so poor and so hungry that he wishes he could eat the feed he’s giving to the pigs. Ironically, he’s back doing farm work, and he’s doing the worst kind. Now it doesn’t take much thinking in this situation to realize that if he’s going to do farm work, he’d be better off back home.

This is all prelude, isn’t it? This is the set up for what comes. This isn’t the only son who’s ever taken part of the family fortune and squandered it. Families are full of guys like this. You probably know a family that’s dealt with something similar. What if it was your family? What if it was your kid? We all want our kids to find their way but this one has already spent his father’s trust and money. How would you handle him?

What happens is a party. Amazingly, his father goes to his son, rushes out to the son, before he even gets all the way home, greets him, gives him a festal coat, puts a ring on his finger and tells the servants to cook up some barbecue. They have a huge party, with brisket and I’m sure beer and wine and every good thing. You’d think this kid had just graduated and gotten a plum job; you’d never know he was a refugee from his own reckless, selfish squandering. 

It’s the father’s joy in finding him alive and home that demands celebrating. The family can never be complete without him. At the end of the story, the father says, “We had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’” Wow: it’s hard to resist singing Amazing Grace, isn’t it? Well, it’s a good song and this is a good story and it might just as well end there but—it doesn’t, does it? No, this isn’t just a man and his son: remember where we started? “A man had two sons.”

The noise of the party is wafting out over the hills, the music, the loud voices, everyone is there except: the other son, the older son. Where is he?—out in the fields, working away, getting jobs done just like he’s always done. Something is growing there and it isn’t just the crop, it’s his resentment, his anger. He’s pouting. Surely he knows about the party, surely someone has told him that his brother’s back, his brother who forced his dad to sell that lovely olive grove, his brother he never really shared the work, even when they were kids, his brother who always got away with everything. Now his brother’s back and he’s not about to pretend he’s happy about it. 

So he stays in the field, works away, until finally his father finds him. His father finds him because it’s dawned on the father that he has two lost sons: one has just returned, one needs to be called back. One is at the party; one is pouting in the field, using work to express anger, his absence from the party speaking his disapproval. Absence doesn’t always make the hart grow fonder; sometimes, it just makes everyone sad.

The father goes out to find him. Because the older brother is so often treated as an after thought, we miss this detail. If you just read the beginning of the story, it seems the action is controlled by the younger brother: he leaves, he squanders, he returns. But it’s the father who is the main agent. He gives the two sons a home, he gives the younger brother what he asks, he goes out to find him when he is on the way home, he makes a party, he goes out to the field to find the other lost son. It’s the father who moves this story forward at every stage and now he does it by talking to his older son. The older son has a grievance and its foundation is the disruption of the family.

For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ [Luke 15:31f]

The younger son came back because in his heart he re-discovered a relationship. Remember his inner dialogue? 

I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” [Luke 15:17-19]

He expects to be treated like a worker at the farm; the older son speaks of working like a slave. The father always has one relationship in mind: they are his sons, they are family. When the younger son realizes this,  it is the invocation of ‘father’ that causes his return. The older son has also lost his relationship.“I worked like a slave,” he says—not like a son. He’s lost the right relationship with his brother, too; he calls him, “This son of yours.”

The father’s response is simple. When the family is complete, when everyone is together, he feels joy and the party is the result. It’s the restoration of relationships that makes the joy. In each encounter, he addresses them as “son” and the party is unstoppable because it comes from the joy of completing the family. “We had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’” Notice the imperative: “We had to celebrate”.

This story is often told as an allegory of forgiveness but that’s a mistake. He says he’s sinned against his father and heaven but it’s not his confession that causes the joy; his father has already run out to find him He is not embraced because he is forgiven but because his his father’s child, because of the father’s joy at his return. He was lost; now he’s found. That’s all that matters to the father. It’s all that matters with both sons: that they be found, that they know they are beloved children. The older brother doesn’t say he’s sorry about pouting, about his resentment. The father embraces him where he is, out there in the field, as he is, for who he is, because he, too, is a son. He embraced the younger one before he even got all the way home; he embraces the older one to bring him home.

This isn’t forgiveness, it’s grace. It isn’t about how we get to where God can love us—it’s knowing that this is what God is like. It’s part of a set in Luke. We don’t have time to explore them all this morning but here is the short version. A man has a hundred sheep, one gets lost and he goes and finds it and when he does, he’s so happy he throws a party to celebrate. A woman has a necklace with ten silver coins; one gets lost and she sweeps the whole house looking for it and when she finds it, she throws a party to celebrate. Are you seeing the pattern?

A man has two sons. One gets lost squandering his life; when he is found, his father is so happy, he throws a party. It’s imperative: he says, “We had to celebrate.” Another son is lost too, lost in resentment and rules. What happens when he is found? The surrounding context of these parables is a group of people who are just like the older brother, angry that Jesus eats with sinners, unhappy about the company he keeps. Those new people don’t know the rules, they don’t know how to behave. So they miss the party God is giving.

Are you going to the party? Paul says, “In Christ there is a new creation.” And he goes on to say that we are God making an appeal through us. This is what God is like, this is what Jesus is teaching. God is like this father who wants to embrace us. Are you going to the party?  We live in a world of boundaries and expectations, rules for what’s polite, what’s right.  All those rules keep us safe; all those walls are made because of our fears. The tough thing, the annoying thing, about Jesus is that he won’t have anything to do with our walls and he wants us to live from faith in God’s joyful embrace instead of our fearful wall building. Jesus lives in a society that is divided up, you heard it at the beginning: there’s Pharisees, teachers of the law, sinners, all these different kinds of people. And he just makes a party for all of them. 

Are you going to the party? This is an enormously loving and wonderful congregation. This is an enormously welcoming and appreciative congregation. That is what God wants and God blesses that. Maybe one more thing: realize that out there in the surrounding community there are people who don’t know that’s what God’s like and lots of people who assume that if they came here, they would be treated like people who lived dissolutely; like the older brother wants his younger brother treated instead of as beloved children. So, Paul says, “We are God making the appeal, ambassadors…” It’s up to us, each of us. If you want to see the love of God flourish here, go be an ambassador. Make this place a party where the love of God is celebrated. Are you going to that party? It’s not easy. Sometimes they play different music, sometimes they hang different banners. God just loves them all. He wants us to live like we are beloved children and his whole life is an example of what that looks like. 

I hear this story, I hear the sound of that party and I want to go. Are you going? Are you coming to the party? I want to get there; I want us all to get there. But more than what I want—God wants us, God wants you, God wants me, God wants all of us. Two Sundays ago we heard Isaiah say for God,

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.[Isaiah 55:1ff]

That’s God’s hope: that we will all, every single one, come to the party. 

Are you coming to the party? Can you let go of everything and just come celebrate? Sing different songs some Sundays, tear up the bulletin and make it confetti, throw it, celebrate, make it the party of the reconciliation of God. When we do, the angels sing and the joy of God overflows like a wine glass poured too full. Jesus is the wine: “poured out for many,” he says. Among them are you; among them are me. Are you coming to the party?

Amen.

Remember Who You Are

by

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

First Sunday in Lent – Year C • March 9, 2025

Deuteronomy 26:1-11 • Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16 • Luke 4:1-13

I’m Nobody

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too? 

Then there’s a pair of us! 

Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!

How public – like a Frog – 

To tell one’s name – the livelong June

To an admiring bog

–Emily Dickinson

Who are you? For most of us, the first attempt to answer that comes shortly after we’re born, when our mothers gave us a name. My first name was for my parents’ best friend at the time, a trumpet player. We haven’t seen him since about 1959. I got my last name from my dad, as most of us do. Later on I got other names: Pastor, Reverend, Parent, Husband, and so on. Who are you? It’s an important question because who we are can determine who we become.

It’s so important that all cultures have a set of signs and signals to tell people about our identity. When we are married, most of us exchange rings.We have bumper stickers that shout political and social messages. We have hats, we have clothing, we have endless ways of saying to the whole world, “This is who I am.”

That’s the point of the section we read in Deuteronomy this morning. God’s people have been welded together by the difficulty of the Exodus, of years in the wilderness. But what happens when that’s over and things ease up? What happens in the promised land? So we have this message: when you get there, when you are living in the land of milk and honey, when things are going right, remember who you are. Go take the first fruits of your success, and give it away and say this. 

A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. [Deuteronomy 26:5-9]

It’s stunning, isn’t it? “Ok, great, you had a good year in the fields and the olives came in just like you hoped but don’t get proud: remember who you are, you’re just an Aramean, an undocumented alien, and everything you’ve made is the God’s gift. Remember who you are.”

This is what scripture is meant to do: remind us of who we are because we have a tendency to forget. We get busy with what we’re doing, step back and see that we’ve done a good job and think, “Wow! I did that!” There’s nothing wrong with a sense of accomplishment, but we can forget in the midst of it, how we got there. A. J. Jacobs set out to thank everyone involved in providing his morning coffee.

Consider this: The coffee beans are driven to my local café in a van (I had to thank the driver). But he couldn’t do his job without the road (thanks to the pavers). And the road would be dangerous without the yellow lines (thanks to the folks who made the paint). We’re talking a boatload of people (which reminds me, the ship designers too). [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-thanked-thousand-people-cup-coffee-here-what-learned-a-j-jacobs/]

My dad became a production engineer and later a lawyer; he held patents, he bought the first automated production system for cars for General Motors. He seldom talked about his life but when he did, he always began, “I came from a dirt farm”. That’s me: whatever I become, I come from dirt farmers in Michigan, it just happens that now I’m a pastor in Pennsylvania. Thanks be to God!

Scripture reminds us we are God’s and whatever we do, we do with the gifts of God. That’s the core of the story of Jesus’ temptation that we read today. Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell a story of Jesus in the wilderness before he began his ministry. They tell us about his baptism, which we read in January. There, the tradition is that God spoke to him directly, saying “You are my beloved Son.” All suggest that immediately after this, he was in the wilderness, hungry, perhaps scared, and there he was tempted. 

Whenever this part is told in movies, all the focus is on the special effects: the scary wilderness, the details of the temptations. But the real point is that there, in the wilderness, Jesus is doing what we can all do: using scripture to remember who he is. He’s hungry and anyone who’s ever been starving can tell you that just the first whiff of food is almost overpowering. So the devil offers that, according to Luke. Jesus replies with a quotation from Deuteronomy: “It is written, “’One does not live by bread alone.’” The devil offers him enormous power and influence; he replies, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” And finally, the devil offers absolute assurance of God’s presence and power: step off a pinnacle, and see if God really protects you. He simply says, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’’”. He’s being tested—he replies, don’t do exactly what you’re doing, devil! These answers are all scripture; these are all from our Bible.

Aren’t these the same temptations we all face?  We think we can take care of ourselves; Jesus could have fed himself. We strive for power and influence; Jesus could have ruled. We want to be certain of God instead of having faith. These temptations run through all of life, in our lives, as they did at this moment for Jesus. They come for us, as they did for him, in the wilderness places, in the places with no signs, in the places where we aren’t sure of our direction. Using our gifts only for ourselves, power and pride, tempting God: haven’t we all felt these temptations, faced them in our own wildernesses?

So it’s important to listen to this story because Jesus is showing us how to respond to temptation and the way he responds is by going back to God’s Word. There’s a reason we read scripture every Sunday, and the reason is that in that Word, we are reminded of who we are: children of God. This is God’s Word over and over. To Moses, God says, “I have heard the cry of my people.” To the prophets, God says, “How can I give you up, O Israel?” And now in Jesus Christ, God says, “You are my beloved children.” Jesus is in the wilderness but he remembers who he is because he remembers his call, he remembers God’s Word.

Who are you? Emily Dickinson was a very quiet poet and perhaps she felt she was nobody. You are not nobody: you are God’s child. Remember who you are! In this season of Lent, throughout these weeks, I want to think about that with you and what it can mean for us. I”m going to suggest a Lenten discipline: take your bulletin home, look up the scriptures we read today, read them over again, and then take a moment to ask God to show you how these words can come alive in your life. You are not nobody: you are a child of God. We are not nobodies: we are children of God. Let’s act like it. 

Amen.

What Are His References?

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Gardening in the Wilderness #4

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor – © 2020 All Rights Reserved

First Sunday in Lent – Year A – March 22, 2020

As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.
The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.”
But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided.
So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.”
The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.”
His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.
Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”
ome of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.
– John 9:1-41

What are his references? That’s a question most of us ask in one way or another from time to time. Employers ask it: no one hires someone without at least trying to find out how they did previously. Today, in this present crisis, we are all presented with information every day and have to decide who to believe. One person tweeted,
“Hey guys, I’m having a tough time deciding to believe. On the one hand, the most prestigious doctors in the world are saying covid-19 is something to take very seriously. But at the same time, this guy I went to high school with says otherwise.” [anonymous tweet]

What are his references? Who should you believe? It’s a question that creeps into our relationship with Jesus in one way or another. We see his story through the glasses of our common sense, our life experience and our own individual histories. We look for the points in these histories that can connect and explain his story. These are Jesus’ references.

The story of the man whose blindness was healed is our story. We also are people who encounter Jesus and are changed by him. We look forward to a final time when we will be able to see him and be with him. Our problem is what to do in the meantime because we live in a world where his presence is not always apparent.

This is an individual challenge: remember, in the story, neither the blind man’s friends nor his parents, neither the crowds nor the Pharisees, were any help to him in understanding how to live with his new sight. There is a mystery here, a mystery that lies at the heart of the way God loves us. For in the structure of our relationship with God there is a scandalous particularity, an individuality, that shakes the foundations of every life that takes it seriously. “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?”, the Psalmist asks, and the answer is always someone’s name, some particular name, some particular person.

Why one person and not someone else? Why you and not me? Why me and not you? This scandal, this particularity, lies near the heart of all our questions about suffering and meaning. Who is this blind man that he should be healed—while others remain blind. Is his moral life more faithful? Does he pray more deeply or more eloquently? Is his faith stronger or in need of strengthening? Nothing in the text answers such questions, nothing in the action of the story gives any explanation.

So it is with us, isn’t it? Since ancient times, one strand of thought held misfortune and disease to be the direct consequence of sin, sometimes a consequence carried on through generations. Part of our religious impulse always wants to quantify. So much sin, so much grace: measured out like the sugar and flour of a cake mix, balanced off like the weights on a jeweler’s scale.

But Jesus directs attention to the deeper realities of the situation. Sin is related to grace, of course, but not as the disciples think. The blind man becomes the living gospel, a person who bridges the gulf between God and human being.“Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord and who shall go for us”, the Psalmist asks, and the answer is always some particular person at some particular moment of time.

Jesus came to a small village for a moment and opened a blind man’s eyes. We tend to think of such characters as special, different, not like us, but the fact is that he is precisely like us. He is a young man who has overcome the obstacles of his life, found a trade and is working industriously at it. He is just like us: pregnant with the possibility of epiphany, capable of becoming the candle by which the divine flame of God is seen to burn and give light.

The disciples want to give this man a practical explanation, almost a scientific one. “Who sinned?”, they ask, “This man or his family?” But to Jesus the man’s circumstances including his blindness are an occasion for showing God’s presence. “This happened so that the work of God”—some translations say glory of God—“might be displayed in his life.”

The Pharisees of the story are puzzled because Jesus doesn’t follow what they expect: His references are nonexistent and his behavior is scandalous. Since they don’t know who he is they concentrate on the how: their concentration on the question of how Jesus healed the man is so striking that he finally asks if they also want to become his disciples. They are seeking a clue to the who through the how: They want the regular procedures followed; they want the rules to apply to everyone. They want to know who Jesus was: where he came from, where he’s been, what schools h attended, how he learned to heal.

There is comfort in the past, in knowing someone’s references. It is predictable, it is safe, it can’t get out of hand and surprise you. “We are disciples of Moses,” they tell the man. But they’ve forgotten Moses was once a wild, free spirit on fire with God. They remember only the rules Moses left. Moses said, “Keep the sabbath holy” and they have transformed that into don’t work on the sabbath. They can’t see that healing is holy; they only see Jesus breaking a rule. Finally, they conclude, he can’t be from God. They don’t know his references and so they simply say, “As for this man, we don’t know where he comes from”.

But the blind man is amazed: he religious and political authorities of his life puzzled.
Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from yet he opened my eyes. If this man were not from God he could do nothing!

This is the ultimate testimony of a follower of Jesus Christ: that our lives have been changed, healed. Sometimes the change is remarkable and radical. Sometimes it is internal and quiet. Sometimes it leads to moments of soaring courage; more often to the simple endurance of living life hopefully each day. The blind man’s history hasn’t changed but now he lives with vision. He is healed. His future is new; as Paul said, “In Christ there is a new creation.” Christ calls us to a new creation, a creation beyond the rules we knew and lived by.

“Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?” This blind man—this particular life, at this particular moment—is the means by which God chooses to work and call others. Who would have thought God would choose such people: an old couple named Abraham and Sarah, an ex-con named Moses, a nine or ten year old shepherd named David, a blind man sitting by the road side. You, me,: are these really the means by which the Almighty God chooses to work and become known? Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? It’s us: there isn’t anyone else.

The people of these Bible stories are not heroic figures. They are people who are busy about their lives and getting on with them. People who have their own hearts and hopes but who are changed when they become the particular way God’s work is demonstrated and moved forward.

The blind man’s story is our story as well. The blind man is not any more prepared to become the visible agent of the invisible Spirit than you or I. Through all this, the agent of his change—Jesus, the one who caused the change—is nowhere to be found. If this is, not only the story of the blind man but the story of the church and therefore our story as well, what does it suggest the task of faithful Christian people is?

Near the end of the story, after all the shouting has died down, the man meets Jesus again, though of course he doesn’t recognize him—remember, he’s never seen Jesus before. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Jesus asks, and when the man asks who this is, Jesus reveals his identify: the man replies, “Lord, I believe.” What is the most important task of believers? Perhaps it is simply to be believers—to live as believers—to keep living as believers. This is, a simple and yet enormously difficult formula.

We are living through a new moment. Many years ago as a young pastor, I met my first 90 year old and I asked him once what was the most significant change he had experienced. He grew up with horses and buggies and lived to see men walking on the moon He had lived through five wars and a depression. But he didn’t mention any of these. Instead, he said the biggest change was quarantine signs. “When I was young, you saw them on houses; we didn’t know what to do about a lot of illness then, so people had to just stay home.” Here we are, just staying home, even if we don’t have a sign on the door. How do we sustain ourselves in a moment when we might not be able to meet here and worship? How do we act on faith when we’re being told don’t go out, don’t do anything?

We have some choices. Two senators did the obvious thing: they figured out how to use what they knew about the effects of a pandemic to make money. They sold some stocks, they did what the culture says: take advantage of opportunities. Contrast that with the doctors and nurses and physicians assistants and the people who just sweep the floor at the hospital. They’re facing a moment when the assurance that health technology will keep them safe has fallen apart. Because our nation didn’t prepare, they don’t have the supplies they need. But they’re still treating patients, they’re still sweeping the floors. They are an emblem of courage.

Here in our church, it’s challenging us. We mostly use old ways of staying in touch: a newsletter, weekly worship, occasional emails and letters. It’s not enough today. So our Deacons are calling around, I’m working on how to deliver a sermon online, we are all being asked to remember daily we are a community of faith and pray for each other. In the midst of a culture of hysteria, we are asked to be hopeful. Staying home is helping friends; calling and staying in touch builds hope and offers help. Our governor said yesterday, “We are all first responders.” Like those hospital workers, we are called to act out of hope.

That isn’t easy. It’s striking to realize how difficult the blind man’s life becomes after he is healed. Friends and family desert him, his trade is lost and the local authorities keep after him. Does he have moments when he wished he had his simple life back, wished the light would go out again and he could sit by the side of the road begging? Perhaps, but at the end of the story, when he knows Jesus, the text simply says, “He worshipped him”.

Christian faith is finally this: to worship Jesus because you have seen what he has done and know that if this man were not from God, he could do nothing. What are Jesus’ references? You are—I am—we all are together. “You are the Body of Christ and individually members of it”, Paul says. We are the ones he is healing; we are the ones he has taught to hope. Hope is ultimate healing. It comes not from a reference or a technique but from a decision about whom you will believe and what you will worship.

We walk in a forest throughout our lives. There are dark shadows that stretch out; there are places where the path is not clear. There are dangers and difficulties and moments when the way opens on inexpressible beauty. As we walk through this forest, we must ultimately decide whether we will trust the vision of Jesus Christ or stumble blindly, hoping on our own to avoid the pitfalls. Nothing guarantees our choice. Putting a cross on the sign does not mean we will not act like Pharisees inside. Only our decision to freely embrace Jesus as a guide can keep us on the path; only our commitment to come to him, as the blind man did, whatever our lives, whatever our history, and simply say, “Lord, I believe”.

Amen.

Palm Sunday B – The Lord Has Need of It

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The Lord Has Need of It

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor © 2018

Palm Sunday • March 25, 2018

Mark 11:1-11

Today is Palm Sunday, an annual celebration with so many memories for me. In other places, other times, I’ve often spent hours planning dramatic worship services. I’ve imagined and then helped churches gather groups to parade down the aisle, bought and handed out hundreds of bits of palm leaves. I’ve encouraged people to wave them, throw them, brought clothes in to simulate the things thrown on the donkey Jesus rode. I’ve never actually bought a donkey in a sanctuary but I’ve discussed it and once I even got close to having one ready to go. So today, in this place, on this Sunday, it seems a little quiet. But in this place, on this morning, what I hope is that we can look at the real Jesus, the real events, the real meaning. What does Palm Sunday have to do with Jesus? What does it have to do with us?

The first thing to understand is the setting. Jerusalem sits on top of a small mountain with winding paths up the slopes. Its tall walls were crowned with the glittering gold of the temple pinnacle and many of the temple walls were clad with white marble that glittered in the hot, bright Near Eastern sun. It’s almost Passover and pilgrims from all over the Mediterranean world are gathering in this sacred place, returning to the City of David to remember their heritage. 
The city is packed to capacity and religious fervor rises. Several years before Jesus and in coming years, that fervor led to riots, spurts of rebellion and the inevitable Roman reaction with red blood running in the streets.

On this day, the stream of pilgrims walking up the paths is pushed aside by a parade. Representing the Son of God, a contingent of Roman soldiers are marching to Jerusalem to enforce the Roman law. “Son of God” is one of the names Romans applied to Emperor Tiberius. For about fifty years, the Romans had seen their leaders as having a kind of divinity, affirmed by their power. Power, in this case, really meant the ability to kill people. Get in the way of Rome, violate Roman law, fail to pay your taxes, and the ultimate Roman answer was violence. From Persia to Spain, Roman law was built on the threat of Roman swords, Roman crucifixion, Roman slavery.

Now, up the western slopes of Mt. Zion, the Roman soldiers wind their way, Roman officers mounted on horses, Roman standards held high. It was a show meant to show off the threat of Rome. How the Jewish king, hated by his own people, must have loved seeing those banners. Worried rulers always love military parades.

Knowing this is going on, knowing the main event, we can turn to the other side of the city where there is also a procession. This one is small, this one is unruly, it has no standards and its leader is ridiculous. The Son of Man, a translation of a phrase that means the representative person, the humble person, is coming to Jerusalem on a donkey. It’s not even a sleek, cool donkey, this one is nursing a colt. Can you imagine it? Can you see it?

I’ve never ridden a donkey, have you? So I went online and it turns out there are directions there for riding a donkey. It says adults are too big for donkeys; so I imagine Jesus with his feet hanging down, dragging along the path. Donkeys have a slow, plodding walk; this procession isn’t going anywhere fast.

Behind Jesus, perhaps around Jesus, are the people who have followed him from Galilee. One writer says,

Jesus came into Jerusalem dragging the world in behind him. He’d spent most of his ministry with what the Pharisees regarded as all the wrong people in all the wrong places. He’d befriended women of dubious reputations, touched lepers, dined with tax collectors, done favors for despised Roman soldiers, held up Samaritans as heroes even as he turned Pharisees into villains. When Jesus entered Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday, he had all of these folks in tow.
[http://yardley.cs.calvin.edu/hoezee/2000/mark11PalmSun.html]

It’s a strange group and here they are, slowly walking behind Jesus, walking behind the Son of Man on a donkey. I can’t imagine anyone is paying attention. After all, on the other side of town, the Roman general is riding a horse, sitting comfortably and grandly up there, with ranks of perfectly disciplined soldiers.

Now that we have the picture in mind, we come back to the story Mark tells and immediately once again to this donkey. What is it about the donkey that’s so important? Jesus makes a huge point of giving instructions about it. There’s endless argument: does he know what will happen or has he planned it? Does he know the donkey owner? Has it been previously rented by some advance disciple? What is the deal with the donkey?
The donkey is a reminder of the hope of God’s covenant. The prophet Zechariah had said,

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
   Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
   triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
   on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
[Zechariah 9:9]

There is Jesus, just as the prophet had said: this teacher comes as the Son of Man, so powerful he can look powerless. The Roman general needs his horse to look important; Jesus IS important. The hope he embodies is also in the testimony of Zechariah,

He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
   and the warhorse from Jerusalem;
and the battle-bow shall be cut off,
   and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
   and from the River to the ends of the earth. 
As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
   I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. 
Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
   today I declare that I will restore to you double. 
[Zechariah 9:10-12]

The symbols of worldly power, the arrogance of calling a man Son of God, is marching on the other side of Jerusalem. But here comes the Son of Man, riding on a silly donkey; he can afford to be silly—for God is riding with him. The armies of Rome are marching on the other side of Jerusalem, ordered ranks, swords showing. Nervous rulers always need military parades.
But here comes the Son of Man and his followers are all kinds of people: men, women, gentiles, Jews, sinners and they are together shouting, “Hosanna!” “Hosannah!” They are what Zechariah described as the prisoners of hope and they have been released; their cry of joy echoes from the hills. The Son of Man comes on a donkey: the Spirit of the Lord renews the covenant, the new covenant that invites us all.

This is where we come to the second meaning of the donkey: the donkey is a decision. Remember what Jesus says,

Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. 3If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’  [Mark 11:2-3]

Someone owns that donkey. Someone pays for that donkey, pays to keep it, pays to stable it, someone uses that donkey for work and getting places. Think of it as your car; think of it as yours.

Now some guys you don’t really know who have a strange accent come and start up your donkey. They sound like they’re from Texas; definitely not from here. Perhaps you saw them when you heard that young prophet from Galilee and you vaguely remember them. When you ask what they’re doing, they say, “The Lord has need of it.” What would you do?

That’s the heart of this story: it all flows from this moment, this decision. “The Lord has need of it.” The challenge of Palm Sunday is just this: whatever you have, the Lord has need of it. Like quilter assembling bits and pieces into a beautiful tapestry, Jesus takes the hurts and hopes of these people he has dragged with him to Jerusalem and makes them a covenant community, a caring community in the new covenant in his blood.

So now we come to our Palm Sunday and like the donkey’s owner, we also are told the Lord has need of what we have: what will we do?

Are you grieving? the Lord has need of it; those who grieve shall be comforted, he says. So bring our grief—his hope is for you, shown to the world in you.
bring him your grief

Are you joyful? Can you see the Lord in your life, blessing you, showing you the beauty of creation, helping you to feel God close and present? The Lord has need of it: 
bring your joy.

Are you hungry? the Lord has need of your hunger, because hungry people are ready to be fed. He’s already fed thousands and he means to nourish us as well, with the bread of life. 
bring him your hunger

Are you doubtful? The Lord has need of your doubts: bring them to him. He never asked anyone to go beyond where their faith would take them.
bring your doubts.

Are you guilty? the Lord has need of it: he’s bringing a new covenant, where forgiveness is the gate to go into glory. 
bring him your guilt.

This one man, whose donkey the Lord needed, became the doorway to a procession we remember down the ages, that we remember when no one but historians remembers the Roman soldiers. This donkey the Lord needed is remembered when the general and his horse are just a footnote.

The Lord has need of it: someone heard, someone said yes, and the donkey became a platform from which the Son of Man proclaimed the fulfillment of God’s covenant had come to Jerusalem. Now every day, every time, we hear the Lord saying about us, about our lives, our whole selves, the good parts and the bad, the hurts and the hopes, that the Lord has need of it. When we give him the reins, the same thing happens. The cries of Hosanna are heard; the procession goes forward. And the words of the psalmist come true: the king of glory comes in.

Amen.

Lent 5 B – The Rainbow Path 5

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Clean Up

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY

by The Rev. James E. Eaton, Pastor ©2018

Fifth Sunday in Lent/B • March 18, 2018

Jeremiah 31:31-34 • Psalm 51:1-12 • John 12:20-22

Click below to hear the sermon preached

One of the great gifts I received when I was called as the pastor of a church in Michigan was the opportunity to be present right after my youngest grand-daughter Bridget was born. There is a picture of Bridget and I, taken when she was about 30 hours old, I value beyond all the wonderful photographs hanging on all the museum walls in the world. I had just been handed her and I remember exactly what I was thinking when Jacquelyn took the shot: “She’s perfect, completely perfect.”

Of course, now I know Bridget a lot better and it turns out she isn’t perfect after all. She’s messy, for one thing; a piece of advice I’d offer is don’t stand too close when Bridget is eating chocolate cake. She has a stubborn sense of order that can drive you crazy. When she was small, one of her favorite games was to take the furniture out of the dollhouse and get me to put it back. The game goes like this: I put a piece of furniture in the dollhouse; Bridget lifts it up, says, “No, Grampa Jim, not there,” and puts it where she believes it should be. Perfect is hard to find, harder to sustain. Are you perfect?

God is perfect and working with this imperfect world. What is God doing? We’re nearing the end of Lent and it’s time to step back and ask how it all fits together. Sometimes we can miss the Word God is speaking because we get so focused on the words. A few weeks ago we read the story of Noah and God’s rainbow covenant, a promise never again to start over, wiping everything out. We read the story of how God started with Abraham and Sarah the whole long, painful promise of reclaiming the world from darkness, restoring it to a place of praise, a community of joy, a shining story of justice. We’ve read God’s attempt in the Exodus and the Ten Commandments and we know how profoundly this failed, how the community of faith God hoped went astray.

Today we read how God began again in the words of Jeremiah.

…this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. [Jeremiah 31:33-34]

In Hebrew thought, the heart was the seat of the will. The verb “know” means to experience intimately, fully. To say God’s covenant will be written on their hearts is to say they will naturally want to fulfill it; to say they will know God is to say they will have a direct, immediate connection with God. No temple, no clergy, no king, nothing else needed.

Why is God doing this? Jeremiah spoke these words to a people already defeated in their hearts, people who have already acknowledged they don’t deserve anything. They were an imperfect people and they knew it. You can hear it in the words of the Psalmist: “…I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.” [Psalm 51:3] If even this people know they don’t deserve another chance, what’s going on here? Why is God trying so hard?

The answer seems to be the concluding line of the Psalm we read: “Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.” [Psalm 51:12] God is trying to bring about a joyful community which will naturally praise, naturally worship, naturally live out God’s justice. When we look at the whole sweep of the story, we discover God is bringing the perfect, heavenly life through a new covenant by working on the least perfect. Jesus is the method.

That is certainly what is happening in the Gospel reading. A group of Greeks are in the crowd around Jesus; they approach Philip and ask to see Jesus. What do you suppose they hope to see? What do they expect to find? Greeks worshipped through the images of a variety of Gods but the central theme of their spiritual life was the notion of the perfect. The Olympic games were a display in which the goal was to display perfect bodies doing athletic things perfectly. Greek philosophy suggests that everything in the world exists as a reflection of a perfect reality in a spiritual world. Even in their political life, it was important that a leader be beautiful; beautiful and perfect were equivalent.

Jewish spiritual life also focused on the perfect. There were hundreds of religious rules and spiritual life was built around trying to observe every one of them perfectly. But few people could or did live up to all the commandments. In Jesus’ preaching, the requirements become even more daunting; he tells them that the commandment against murder, for example, is violated when we get angry at someone. In one way or another, both understand God is perfect and both believe the answer to getting nearer to God is to be perfect also.

What are Jews hoping about Jesus? That he will act in perfect accord with the law. What are the Greeks hoping to see? A perfect man, whose perfection mirror’s God.

This is why Jesus confuses and angers them: he offers a completely different path to God. Jewish leaders are already angry; we hear over and over again about Jesus, “This man eats with sinners.” Perfect people only ate with other perfect people; it’s scandalous that Jesus will have lunch with anyone at all. He embraces God’s joyful provision and his disciples gather food on the Sabbath; he heals on the Sabbath and tells the leaders that Sabbath is a gift, not a burden. Now he turns to the Greeks and tells them something that must have left them gasping. He tells them he’s going to die.

Jesus answered them,

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. [John 12:23-25]

We are so familiar with the story of Jesus’ death that it fails to shock us. But perfect people didn’t get crucified; perfect Sons of God didn’t die. When Jesus embraces his life and speaks of dying, they must have been stunned. When they hear this is how he is going to represent God, they must have been confused. But Jesus knows the truth. He says that this is the new covenant in his blood: by his death, he shows what covenant faithfulness looks like. This is the picture: a life freed from death through trust in a loving, forgiving creator God.

Jesus offers in place of perfections what the Psalmist calls “God’s steadfast love.” In his teaching about community, Jesus stresses something we talk about but have a hard time practicing: the role of forgiveness. The Greeks measure spirit by perfection; Jesus measures it by love. Here is how things work in the joyful community of Jesus: we’re equally brothers and sisters, we recognize in each other the image of a child of God, and when that child does something wrong, stumbles falls, even falls way down, we respond by encouraging repentance and offering forgiveness.

Jesus says that what we ought to do is stop trying to be perfect and start learning to forgive each other. How many times, his disciples ask? “Seventy times seven”, he responds, a way of saying: endlessly. The rhythm of life in Jesus is a constant sea of love where the waves peak and we are carried closer to God and the waves recede and we forgive and are forgiven.

This is what church life is supposed to look like. Of course, it often doesn’t, because we’ve often copied the world around. In this world, we increasingly hold out an image of perfection and then savagely attack those who seemed to embody it but fall short. We see it in politics, we see it in sports, we see it in the cult of celebrity. We see it in the screaming commentators on TV; we see it in the constant “gotcha” ping-pong of news. We have become Greeks and we use Jesus to help us look more perfect.

But what God hopes is that instead, we will let Jesus use us not to make the world more perfect but to teach it how to love, and how to forgive. God hopes we will teach the world the fundamental reality Jesus preaches here: that we can’t bear fruit except through an unfolding process, a process in which our imperfect seeds sprout and change and produce. That’s how God is working out this great purpose; that’s how God is perfecting the world, by teaching us that instead of being perfect, we can be loved as we are. Like a parent laughing at a child who has gotten dirty and summoning them to a bath, God knows we can always be cleaned up; God remembers who we really are underneath.

I’ve led a couple of churches with preschools and floating through the walls of my study, every day there would be a song signaling the end of the day:

Clean up, clean up, everybody do your share,

Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere.

Things get messy; people get dirty. I don’t honestly know that everyone does do their part; I do know I love the song. In Jesus Christ, God is singing this same song, summoning all God’s children to clean up, clean up, asking all God’s children to do their part. If Bridget isn’t perfect, she is perfectly lovable and perfectly loved. So are you: so am I. In Jesus Christ, God is offering us forgiveness, cleaning us up, and getting us ready to sing the songs of glory in our heavenly home.

Amen.